iOS wins over more new smartphone buyers as Android holds steady

Forty-three percent of recent smartphone buyers picked up an iOS device, while …

iOS is continuing to creep up on Android's smartphone market share, according to a recent survey by Nielsen. While iOS penetration remains a distant second to Android overall, survey respondents in the United States showed that 43 percent of recent smartphone acquirers purchased an iOS device, while new Android owners constituted 48 percent.

The percentage figures above are for "3 month recent acquirers," or survey respondents who got a smartphone in the last three months. Comparing the overall market share figures to the recent acquirer breakdown shows that Android is holding steady: 48 percent of both recent acquirers and smartphone owners in general have Android in this survey. In a survey from January 2012, 46.3 percent of all smartphone owners had Android phones. Only 32 percent of all smartphone-owning respondents now have iOS, compared to 30 percent in January.

The recent-acquirer balance has also shifted since Nielsen's January survey. At that time, 51.7 percent of 3-month recent acquirers had purchased Android phones and 37 percent had chosen iOS. In total, 49.7 percent of the mobile phone-owning public has smartphones, according to the survey.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

I will not be going with Android again when my contract is up in July. In fact, I can hardly wait. Little point in selling the stupid thing, as it's probably worth peanuts. Might just give it my kids to play with.

ICS isn't a major upgrade? Oh wait, it hasn't rolled out yet. If the handset maker and carrier decide to roll it out at all. Or maybe people are tired of side loaded apps that can't be removed.

Google has done a great job getting Android out there, but has done a poor job ensuring a solid end user experience that will translate into repeat sales. Hate on Apple, but they own the iPhone customer experience from the software by providing continuous updates for several years to providing technical support and service for the device. With Android, you'd better hope you get a popular handset that the carrier and/or OEM are actually committed to for any length of time.

These deficiencies with Android are not new, they've been around for some time. Google needs to step up a bit and start exerting a little more control - at least on handsets that carry their logo - to address some end user concerns. Getting a customer to buy one of your shiny smartphones is just the first step. Keeping them as repeat customers is also important.

I'm a recent iPhone convert, after a couple of years with Android phones. I like(d) the promise of Android and, early on, I think it was good. Then it became too many devices, no unification regarding system updates, and potentially being locked into two years on an out-of-date OS.

It's not that the OS or even the device is horrible. But, currently, it all felt like it was getting in the way of me using the device. Granted, it could be a unique combination of things in my case. But I don't think so. Then, after getting ICS on the Xoom and being irritated at that, I just gave up. It's a garbled mess of an interface. Hell, I'm not really a graphics guy and I think it looks abysmal. There's no unifying theme. It also became a more jaggy and laggy experience, compared to Honeycomb. It has some features that are nice, but are poorly implemented or poorly thought out. (There is a 4.0.4 update to the Xoom that is rolling out that may change some of that. I hope so. It was good enough before ICS, but since 4.0 rolled out it's been gathering dust.)

A lot of the hardware seems suboptimal, too. The HTC Hero and the EVO were both good and worked well. The Motorola Photon, although seemingly well specced, just feels laggy (on stock Gingerbread that it came with) and not quite up to the task - delays after tapping, a jagged feel to screen animations, slower on Sprint's 3G than the iPhone on T-Mobile's Edge, etc.

iOS does just work. It has a unified feel, users can at least expect to receive regular updates for 2-3 years after release. IOW: you can plan around that and your contract terms, if you want to.

The only thing that was keeping the Photon around was that Sprint's phone coverage at home was better, while T-Mobile was nearly non-existent. That changed recently. Not sure if it was an update to the phone or if T-Mobile placed/upgraded some towers, but now phone reception at home is better than Sprint.

While I liked Android and a part of me does want it to be better, it just seems like one hot mess of spaghetti thrown at the wall. And it's all slipping down to a very dirty floor.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Troll harder next time.

Resale price? Really. If that's not the obvious hallmark of a fanboy then what is?

I think knee-jerk defensiveness is more of a fanboy hallmark, to be honest. Maybe keep the ad hominems to yourself and let the grown-ups talk.

Well to be fair, WHO brings up resale price? I've never tried to resell a cellphone. Use it until it's crap and your contract is up, then toss it and buy another one. With new $0 phones out there, why buy a phone where a few keys don't work perfectly anymore and the screen on the clam shell is cracked? The most I've done for reselling a mobile device is to sell an old iPod to someone who used it for a year or two before it died. The others have died in my possession and caused me to buy a new one.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Troll harder next time.

Resale price? Really. If that's not the obvious hallmark of a fanboy then what is?

You don't think it's at all important? Why should only fanbois dislike throwing money away? I do, especially when buying a new one seems to be an easier path to software upgrade than getting it from your carrier.

Resale price? Really. If that's not the obvious hallmark of a fanboy then what is?

WTF? How is noting resale price the "obvious hallmark of a fanboy"?!?

If there were single statistic you were going to give to an uniformed consumer, you could do a lot worse than resale price.

Traditionally, Japanese cars like Honda and Toyota have had much better resale price than American cars like GM and Ford.

Do you think that is because:a) Honda and Toyota have traditionally been more reliable than GM and Fordorb) Honda and Toyota buyers are all fanboys

That's off topic, but I would say "b". You can point to stats from the 80s that prove point "a". Lately GM and Ford have had their act together but people still have the mindset that Honda and Toyota are way more reliable. Why? because it's been put in their head and they don't re-evaluate it. They don't go buy an American car and they don't read any articles on the topic. Then their brother-in-law or neighbor says that Honda is the most reliable and they agree that it is, but neither has any updated information on the subject. It's just an echo chamber.

EDIT: Here from 2009. Says Honda and Toyota are most reliable but Ford is really close behind. "The magazine said Ford’s performance in the survey “dispels the notion that only Japanese manufacturers make reliable cars.” " http://wheels.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10 ... loses-gap/

Resale price? Really. If that's not the obvious hallmark of a fanboy then what is?

WTF? How is noting resale price the "obvious hallmark of a fanboy"?!?

If there were single statistic you were going to give to an uniformed consumer, you could do a lot worse than resale price.

Traditionally, Japanese cars like Honda and Toyota have had much better resale price than American cars like GM and Ford.

Do you think that is because:a) Honda and Toyota have traditionally been more reliable than GM and Fordorb) Honda and Toyota buyers are all fanboys

Both answers wrong. Honda and Toyota replacement parts are much easier and cheaper to get; primarily because there are so many of them and many parts are interchangeable between models. It also helps that labour cost is cheaper because they are easy to take apart and put back together. As a corollary to that, Honda and Toyota tends to age well and maintain its resale value.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Troll harder next time.

Resale price? Really. If that's not the obvious hallmark of a fanboy then what is?

I don't understand. How can you tell? Does one of the platforms have a worse resale value and if so, which one? Thanks in advance.

No but you can bet that there are more subpar Android phones than iPhones. For example, NZ Vodafone sells their own branded Android touch screen phones. They are CRAP. You will be lucky to get even a dollar on resale.

Top of the line Android phones tends to have better resale value but the price is comparable to iPhones anyway in that case.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Weird you feel that way, I'm almost totally opposite from you. I find iOS to be horribly ugly, page after page of row upon row of icons? This is the shining example of good UI design? Where are the widgets, the interactive backgrounds and the options to differentiate my phone?

What exactly do you mean by the "OEM's appalling"? That is a serious question, not trying to troll here. Just not sure what you mean. The Nexus line of phones are bad?

My biggest issues with Android are the lack of OS updates. Google really needs to get a grip on the carriers and manufactures to get those updates out quicker. Other than that just the sheer amount of apps that iOS sees makes me jealous as well, mostly the games that bother me.

My biggest issue with iOS is the walled garden. I can't stand the Apple ecosystem and the lock-in you get with iOS. That combined with the lack of "techie" options (HDMI out, USB ports, gamepad support, file system, etc) I just can't get behind Apple. It's too bad I can't load ICS on Apple hardware, cause they sure do make nice hardware.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Weird you feel that way, I'm almost totally opposite from you. I find iOS to be horribly ugly, page after page of row upon row of icons? This is the shining example of good UI design? Where are the widgets, the interactive backgrounds and the options to differentiate my phone?

What exactly do you mean by the "OEM's appalling"? That is a serious question, not trying to troll here. Just not sure what you mean. The Nexus line of phones are bad?

My biggest issues with Android are the lack of OS updates. Google really needs to get a grip on the carriers and manufactures to get those updates out quicker. Other than that just the sheer amount of apps that iOS sees makes me jealous as well, mostly the games that bother me.

My biggest issue with iOS is the walled garden. I can't stand the Apple ecosystem and the lock-in you get with iOS. That combined with the lack of "techie" options (HDMI out, USB ports, gamepad support, file system, etc) I just can't get behind Apple. It's too bad I can't load ICS on Apple hardware, cause they sure do make nice hardware.

Official build? The wife has a GS2 still running Honeycomb, I'd love to get her updated to ICS. I've also got a Transformer Prime that's been running ICS since we got it, pretty slick OS upgrade. I've got no issues with ICS, seems just as good as iOS performance wise compared to an iPad2. I'd rank it as the better OS simply for all the customizations you can do in Android. I'm not a big fan of static wallpapers and rows of icons you see.

I don't think you can poo-poo resale value out-of-hand. I have no idea what the going rates are for Android handsets but I got a serious chunk of cash for my aged iPhone 3G, more than I expected. In the past I did pretty much scrap my old phones (usually donated them).

Official build? The wife has a GS2 still running Honeycomb, I'd love to get her updated to ICS. I've also got a Transformer Prime that's been running ICS since we got it, pretty slick OS upgrade. I've got no issues with ICS, seems just as good as iOS performance wise compared to an iPad2. I'd rank it as the better OS simply for all the customizations you can do in Android. I'm not a big fan of static wallpapers and rows of icons you see.

It's the one released through Samsung Kies. So definitely official one.

There's also a live wallpaper called MultiPicture Live Wallpaper which lets you set a wallpaper directory and it will cycle through the pictures randomly at specified intervals to change the wallpaper on each scroll page.

Official build? The wife has a GS2 still running Honeycomb, I'd love to get her updated to ICS. I've also got a Transformer Prime that's been running ICS since we got it, pretty slick OS upgrade. I've got no issues with ICS, seems just as good as iOS performance wise compared to an iPad2. I'd rank it as the better OS simply for all the customizations you can do in Android. I'm not a big fan of static wallpapers and rows of icons you see.

ICS was just released on the GS2. PS are you sure you don't mean Tab since the GS2 only ever had Gingerbread Honeycomb was a tablet exclusive.

Official build? The wife has a GS2 still running Honeycomb, I'd love to get her updated to ICS. I've also got a Transformer Prime that's been running ICS since we got it, pretty slick OS upgrade. I've got no issues with ICS, seems just as good as iOS performance wise compared to an iPad2. I'd rank it as the better OS simply for all the customizations you can do in Android. I'm not a big fan of static wallpapers and rows of icons you see.

ICS was just released on the GS2. PS are you sure you don't mean Tab since the GS2 only ever had Gingerbread Honeycomb was a tablet exclusive.

I mean Galaxy S2 for me. Not too sure about Galaxy Tab. Never had one.

I feel burned by the experience. The "stock" UI is dreadful, the OEM's appalling, and third party products sorely lacking. Not to mention the woeful updates, shocking resale price and awful styling.

Weird you feel that way, I'm almost totally opposite from you. I find iOS to be horribly ugly, page after page of row upon row of icons? This is the shining example of good UI design? Where are the widgets, the interactive backgrounds and the options to differentiate my phone?

I used to think like you, but there is a moment on life where you stop enjoying tweaking your toys and want things to just work. I can't install a SSH server on my iPad but so what, the things I use it for it does it very well. I love my Android phone but I'm considering trying a Nokia or an iPhone next, and my contract already expired.

The people who claim to have no problem with ICS are just techies who've gotten used to garbage. Android has serious battery issues, both in active use and on standby. There are threads like this one on XDA (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthr ... ?t=1179809) devoted entirely to finding out what background processes are destroying users' standby battery life. The problem is Android's primitive system of wakelocks that allow any less than perfectly coded program to run roughshod over your battery. Even Google's own OS-bundled programs, such as Google Talk, cause serious battery issues.

Perhaps worst of all is Android's UI thread isn't given priority over applications, just like the old Blackberry OS, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and even desktop Windows OS. So anytime an application uses too much CPU power, memory bandwidth, or other system critical resources, the UI stutters and comes to a halt. And the more apps you install on your device, the more it slows down. Just read Anandtech's preview of Qualcomm's upcoming Krait architecture, and how the author notes ICS runs smoother than he's ever seen before on the new S4. Google's solution to the UI lag is to wait for faster hardware. That used to be Microsoft's ethos. Unfortunately for the rest of us still stuck on Cortex A8 and A9 CPUs, Android still can't scroll down its own system menus smoothly. There are endless garbage collection hiccups (thanks java!), and browsing heavy websites like theverge while it's still loading results in a painful user experience.

I'm not sure what it's like any other areas, but if you walk down any mall or visit any cell phone vendor in Canada you'll see nothing but wall to wall Samsung and HTC devices on display, plus a few BlackBerrys. and *zero* iPhones. All major carriers in Canada sell the iPhone, but none of them push it.

Yet, Apple is now the largest smartphone manufacturer in Canada.

Apple's success in the smart phone industry is absolutely remarkable, given the almost complete lack of support from the carriers.

On the other hand, the success of Samsung shows that the carriers still play a huge role in deciding which phones will be pushed on to the unsuspecting average consumer. If you're a traditional cell phone manufacturer, there's still a lot of money to be made by playing by old rules.

It probably has more to do with the fact that Apple has so few products, meaning that the demands for them will be slightly higher. More demands = higher price. Basic economics.

Dude, I have a PhD in econ from one of the top two departments in that field. I think what you mean to say is that the supply is lower, not the demand. But even so, you'd have to construct a model in which the supply of used iPhones relative to the supply of new iPhones is much lower than the supply of used Android phones relative to the supply of new Android phones. I doubt it would make much sense.

Weird you feel that way, I'm almost totally opposite from you. I find iOS to be horribly ugly, page after page of row upon row of icons? This is the shining example of good UI design? Where are the widgets, the interactive backgrounds and the options to differentiate my phone?

I used to think like you, but there is a moment on life where you stop enjoying tweaking your toys and want things to just work. I can't install a SSH server on my iPad but so what, the things I use it for it does it very well. I love my Android phone but I'm considering trying a Nokia or an iPhone next, and my contract already expired.[/quote]

But tweaking things is part of the fun. That said, most DECENT Android products tends to work straight out of the box without needing to tweak anyway. (Caveat DECENT)

I used to think like you, but there is a moment on life where you stop enjoying tweaking your toys and want things to just work. I can't install a SSH server on my iPad but so what, the things I use it for it does it very well. I love my Android phone but I'm considering trying a Nokia or an iPhone next, and my contract already expired.

If only Google hadn't driven out competitors by dumping a free OS China-style onto the market, we could have the best of both worlds with MeeGo or webOS.